forrest-dev mailing list archives

Ok guys,
I think we have enough community critical mass to make this happen, but
one thing is for sure: I wanted this project and I want it to be
focused.
So I need to give more focus.
I call this a 'dream-list' because a wish-list is not enough, but as Sam
once stated, "some people have no vision" and even if I believe the
people that subscribed here are those *with* the vision, it doesn't hurt
to throw more dreams in and get people excited.
- o -
Ok, first of all: "it hurts my spirit" (I should TM this) to see the
apache web sites with such a *poor* information infrastructure. Just
look at sourceforge: it's not the best site of the world, but gives you
lots of tools and information that we currently don't have (or have
hidden someplace).
I want Forrest to be the development infrastructure of your dreams,
something that you'll be proud of showing your boss and say "if only we
had this in place, we would save big bucks" so...
Dream #1: Forrest should make Sourceforge look obsolete.
So, in order for this to happen, it must be dynamic.
Assumption #1: Forrest is a dynamic site.
The staticity of apache web sites was mostly due to the quest for heavy
mirroring, Forrest should allow mirroring, so
Dream #2: Forrest should reduce xml.apache.org bandwidth use
dramatically
and
Dream #3: Forrest should automate mirroring in a simple and easy
way.
My idea is to use the 'command line' features of Cocoon to generate
static snapshots of sites and produce mirrors directly using a sort of
rsync or other mean. Anyway, the goal is to make sure mirroring is as
easy as possible. No, easier than than that.
Ok, but what should Forrest give us:
1) coherence: all the site should look coherent, same graphics, same
look&feel, same information in the same locations, coherent and nice URI
space (build to last! so that broken links are reduced!)
2) structure: the site should look professional, the structure should be
flexible enough to fit every need but solid enough to guide users
browing and developers adding resources
Ok, but the best thing is 'functionality': everything you wanted to have
in your project web site.... here are the things I've been missing:
1) logs and community rating: I want to have numbers to judge the value
of a community/effort
2) built-in search engine: users much have a simple way to find things
3) user-writable pages: people should have a way to add things to the
pages.
4) short bios for the project committers, with pictures: gives a better
sense of community. Having a weblog there would be great.
5) news, announcements, events and project calendaring: the news and
the annoucements will generate a RSS feed, events will be aggregated
into a project-wide calendar, or an effort-specific calendar, the events
will also be overwritten on the logs, to indicate how logs were
influenced by the events (say, a release or a new committer added)
6) book-like PDF versions of documentation: easy to print out docs.
7) integration with GUMP: dependencies, runs, committer that broke the
run
8) javadocs seemlessly integrated with the documentation and with the
search engine
9) mail archive seemlessly integrated with the search engine (I should
look for something and get results from either docs, javadocs or emails
messages)
10) coherent-looking CVS view
11) document translation using Google translation services
Ok, I think it's enough for now.
throw your comments in the lake.
--
Stefano Mazzocchi One must still have chaos in oneself to be
able to give birth to a dancing star.
<stefano@apache.org> Friedrich Nietzsche
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